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How Will Apple's Swift Benefit Developers?


iPhone application development companies, custom iPhone app development, iPhone software developerSwift can be defined as a multi-paradigm as well as a compiled programming language that has been developed by Apple. Swift is specifically designed for the development of iOS and OS X. The developers have designed the language for replacing Objective-C (O-C), which is an object-oriented language of Apple.

It uses the same LLVM compiler as well as runtime as its older counterpart. That is why, while some say that Swift will quickly replace Objective-C, another school of thought says that both O-C as well as Swift can actually co-exist hand in hand in a particular application. The language also provides a seamless access to all the customary features like Cocoa or Cocoa Touch that the developers are currently using.

When it comes to using, from the developers’ point of view the language should feel identical as well as familiar to O-C. Hence, those who are used to with the previous avatar will also be able to handle this new language with ease.

Now let us discuss why the language has gained so much popularity amongst the developers. Swift frankly speaking, comes up with a string of added benefits, which have made a marked difference, so far as development is concerned, especially when it comes to designing or developing apps for iPads or iPhones. While for all these days, it was Objective-C, Swift is swiftly taking over as the base programming language.

The introduction of this new program has given a shot in the arm to the development ecosystem of Apple. The language is all set to bring in an altogether new generation of various innovative applications that are leaving the developers overjoyed. Swift, at its very core is designed to provide a much faster as well as an easier way to the developers, particularly when it comes to designing programs for devices like Mac, iPad, iPhone and the likes. Swift is strong enough to do all the complicated trappings for Objective-C. It can replace them with much simplified syntax that is much easier to tackle, though the entire stuff feels strikingly similar to Objective-C.

The language comes with other highly powerful features like Playgrounds, which is a system that provides the developers the provision of watching how the changes to their projects have an impact on the end product that they need to add for tweaking their codes. While using O-C, the developers had to wait for the compilation and running of their projects, before they got the chance to test any change of codes. This was, to say the least a cumbersome and a time consuming mechanism.

Another highly interesting feature that the language comes up with is that it rectifies the focus on declaring the variable types that Objective-C comes up with. With the introduction of Swift, the developers do not have the need of specifying in a particular code, whether a variable is a text string or a floating-point number.

Both Swift as well as O-C uses identical compiler. This is why an app can have O-C as well as Swift source code. This brings in a substantial benefit for the developers or programmers.

Though the language is not without any rough edge whatsoever, still in general the developers and programmers are simply overwhelmed by the features as well as the technology roadmap the language comes up with. While Objective-C is challenging as well as an effusive language with a string of syntaxes, it lacked a number of features, and this is where Swift has scored over its older objective version.

Thanks to these new features, Swift has made Mac as well as iOS extremely appealing, especially for the new and young developers who still looking forward to design and develop their first applications for Mac and iPhone. Before we round up, let us look at some of the salient features of Swift from a bird’s eye view.

1. It comes up with Closures that are unified with the function pointers – quite similar to blocks that you find in C or its objective version.
2. Generics.
3. Tuples as well as values of multiple returns.
4 Fast as well as precise iterations over a wide collection or range.
5. Structs that are compatible with supporting methods, protocols as well as extensions.
6. Patterns or Functional programming like filters and maps.

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